The so-called film industry, from creativity to execution to release, every link has countless obstacles. After the review can always say that he is ugly, but he may not be able to foresee in the meantime.
Born out of the same script, the Chinese film "Lobster Criminal Police" released last year was completely defeated by the Korean film "Extreme Occupation" released this year, but the author can only admit that "Lobster Criminal Police" is very "rotten", but can not agree with how good "Extreme Occupation" is, which can only be said to be a passing work in many police films, and it is still 18,000 miles away from the classic.
The problem may lie in the common motherbook of the two films. Since I have not seen the first draft of the 2015 edition, I can only deduce it from the film.
Extreme Career poster
According to relevant reports, the first draft scripts of "Lobster Cop" and "Extreme Occupation" are from a project called "2015 Sino-Korean Story Co-development". Later, for various reasons, the copyright owner Haegrimm sold the script to two companies in China and South Korea for separate development.
From the perspective of the film industry, the first draft of the script is a very early stage, and by the time it really enters the shooting period, the appearance of the script may have undergone earth-shaking changes. The author can only make the assumption that the first draft of 2015 should have the following settings:
1. A group of anti-drug police officers who waste firewood;
2. For the purpose of stalking and other purposes, the police set up a deserted small restaurant;
3, the restaurant accidentally caught fire;
4. In the case of various yin and yang errors, the waste wood police solved the big case.
The final screenplay of "Lobster Cop" clearly made mistakes in several places, and even in the context of Extreme Occupation, it became more like a failing student work.
The biggest mistake of "Lobster Cop" is that they did not take advantage of the crayfish gimmick. It is worth using "Extreme Occupation" as a frame of reference to talk about the mistakes of "Lobster Cop".
The scrappy cops in Extreme Professions and Lobster Cop
In "Extreme Occupation", after the undercover police took down the fried chicken shop, because of the so-called new store effect, many early adopters suddenly came. A few police officers initially resorted to sending customers away or buying fried chicken from other fried chicken shops. Subsequently, several policemen made fried chicken once each, and suddenly found that one of them was from Suwon, and the fried chicken he made by making His own method of making Suwon King ribs (or Suwon big ribs) was very delicious, so he really went into the market with the fried chicken business. This Suwon King rib flavored fried chicken has become a popular new product and has been welcomed by consumers.
In "Lobster Cop," a convincing process is lacking. Why did a small, remote shop suddenly open its doors after the police took over? Why is the crayfish made by one of the policemen so delicious? Is there a special flavor? There are only a few lines praising the thirteen spices of crayfish, but which crayfish restaurant in China does not have thirteen spices?
In "Extreme Occupation", a certain amount of space is used to show the popularity of the fried chicken shop, how good the business is, so good that the police have no intention and no time to stalk, so they also take measures such as increasing the price of fried chicken and limited supply. But in "Lobster Cop", it is a brush stroke, scrawled to the point where the billboard at the door shows that the unit price of crayfish has risen and the limited supply is used in only a few shots.
"Extreme Occupation" uses fried chicken as a useful prop from beginning to end, and in the final stage of the film, due to media exposure, the fried chicken shop business plummeted, and drug lords took the opportunity to join the gang and use the takeaway of this fried chicken shop to start a drug trafficking business. The problem of "Lobster Police" has once again been exposed, the crayfish has not been throughout, its function is not as important as the crayfish shop, that is to say, the address of the crayfish shop is the focus, which is equivalent to "China on the Tip of the Tongue" shooting food patting how to make an iron pot as the narrative focus, ignoring the food itself.
Compared with why the fried chicken in "Extreme Occupation" is delicious, "Lobster Police" does not explain clearly why the crayfish made by the police is delicious
I can understand the motivation of the Chinese and Korean creative teams to make different choices between food and restaurants, because they all have to obey a prerequisite, that is, to make people feel credible. As far as the logistics industry is concerned, there are only "two countries in the logistics industry" in the world, one is called Chinese logistics and the other is called foreign logistics. China's courier brother and takeaway brother are too cattle, so the screenwriter must obey the unprecedented development of China's logistics industry, and under the premise of doing a lot of simplification compared to the Korean version of the character line, it is still designed to be a courier company with an oblique door. In "Extreme Occupation", the use of fried chicken shops as a disguise to let the brother in the store send drugs in the name of takeaway is very commonplace, but it is not necessarily convincing in China, because Chinese audiences will naturally think, why not meituan, hungry and other takeaway brother delivery? That's why Lobster Cop had to make a fuss about the address of the crayfish shop. However, one of the results of this is the weakening of the role of crayfish mentioned above, and it can even be said that this movie can also be made into "Ramen Criminal Police" and "Shaxian Criminal Police". Without characteristics, how to succeed.
The bigger problem with "Lobster Cop" compared to "Extreme Occupation" is the shaping of the motives and determination of the wastewood police in the film. This may have something to do with the need to maintain the image of the people's public security, but it does give the film a fundamental sense of falsehood. The police in "Extreme Occupation" always have a sense of crisis, which includes several aspects: one is face, they are too wasteful, they can't look up in front of leaders and peers, and the other comes from the sense of honor of the profession, they need to prove that they are capable of being a policeman, and they need to prove their ability by any means.
But in "Lobster Cop", you can't feel how bad these cops really are, and even have a feeling that they are very cattle from beginning to end, which makes the story very screwed. Because from the logic of the story, these policemen will make the move of stalking the store because they are very weak, but if they are not weak in nature, then why should they be so broken?
The completion of "Lobster Police" is indeed bad, and even because of the existence of "Extreme Occupation", it exposes the shortcomings of all aspects of the current Chinese film industry. But this does not reverse the fact that the existence of "Lobster Cop" sets off how successful "Extreme Occupation" is.
"Extreme Occupation" is also difficult to become a classic movie. Because it's too routine. In the process of watching the movie, it made me see the shadow of many old Hong Kong films, such as Hong Jinbao's "Five Lucky Stars" series, "Double Cannon" series, or Stephen Chow's "Truant Weilong" series, etc., and some places made me think of Jackie Chan's "Police Story" series. Zooming in to Hollywood, how do you think such an "undercover cops" comedy is essentially different from movies like "Kindergarten Cop" and "Miss Congeniality"?
The first half hour of "Extreme Occupation" is too procrastinating, and it is not crisp to turn it over and shake twice. As mentioned above, both films have a mother book, and the key to their creativity lies in the fact that the waste wood police opened an Internet celebrity food shop in the process of opening an undercover store. And such dramatic tension can not effectively support the structure of the whole film, and because of this, whether it is the box office hit "Extreme Occupation" or the box office "Lobster Police", they all have obvious sketch-style narratives, all rely on paragraphs to fill the time, but the baggage of "Extreme Occupation" is shaking, and "Lobster Criminal Police" is smashed. But "Extreme Occupation" can only be seen, enjoyed, and difficult to recall. The author can only sum it up like this - it is not difficult to make a good movie, such as "Extreme Occupation", and it is not difficult to make a movie, such as "Lobster Police".